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Floor Speech

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Mr. HOEVEN. Madam President, I rise today, again, regarding the need to secure our southern border. Right now there is a caravan of migrants making its way to Mexico through the southern border.

Media reports that it could be the largest caravan ever, growing to 15,000 migrants by the time it reaches the U.S. border. The unprecedented and growing crisis at the southern border is due to the Biden administration's misguided immigration policies.

This includes the lack of enforcement of key tools, including the ``Remain in Mexico'' policy, the safe third country agreements, and the title 42 public health order.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported that in April of this year, over 234,000 individuals were encountered attempting to illegally cross the southern border--234,000 in the month of April.

This is an increase of 31 percent from April of 2021, last year, and a staggering 1,268-percent increase from April of 2020, 2 years ago. There are 234,000 individuals attempting to cross the border illegally in just 1 month--just 1 month.

I was recently in Del Rio and Eagle Pass, TX, to draw attention to the challenges at the border and to meet with the North Dakota Army National Guard soldiers. Our Guard members are providing support to Customs and Border Protection in light of the immigration crisis.

Our dedicated CBP officers and agents are working tirelessly to try to fulfill their mission of securing the border, with the added pressure and stress of addressing the humanitarian crisis occurring with the continuing surge of migrants seeking to cross the border illegally.

While they do everything they can, they face an impossible task that the Biden administration's actions are exacerbating. As I mentioned earlier, the current crisis at the southern border is the result of the Biden administration's policies.

Notably, the Biden administration is now attempting to end the use of public health order 42--just last month. Those efforts failed when a Federal judge correctly issued an injunction preventing the Biden administration from ending title 42.

The Federal injunction noted that rescinding title 42 will result in a significant increase in illegal immigration at the southern border. This includes an anticipated tripling of illegal border crossings at the border, increasing from 7,000 per day to 18,000 per day, should public health order 42 end.

At the same time, the ongoing crisis at the southern border is creating significant challenges for northern border operations and the security of our northern border. Northern border personnel and resources continue to be depleted because of the surge at the southern border. That is unacceptable.

We need to address the ongoing crisis at the southern border and ensure that we have the resources we need at our northern border as well.

Border security is vital to national security, and we need to secure them both. President Biden's actions have incentivized migrants to take the dangerous journey to the U.S. border. We need to change those policies to get the border crisis under control.

That means we need to do three things to ensure that we have a secure border. We need to make sure that we continue the border wall, along with personnel and technology to make sure that we secure the border; we need to reinstate key immigration policies like I talked about; and we need to move toward a merit-based immigration system.

Again, we need to enforce our Nation's immigration laws, resume construction of the border wall, and ensure that we have in place the infrastructure, the personnel, and the technology to adequately secure the border. The Biden administration needs to take these steps, and they need to do it now.

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